steve the game freezes just about every battle or two. its ridiculous. it freezes after a battle or it freezes when going from the strat after a battle to a battle. no rhyme or reason it seems. it freezes at any time. i talked to bigbear again on the online chat in PITF and he said the same thing, that the game freezes all the time for him and his opponent also.

The problems in H2H play are consistent with me - this is the primary way that I play the game, and it's a consistent hassle. We typically re-start the game 2-3 times per 90 minute play session, and have become accustomed to saving the game at every opportunity so that we don't lose our place (we play the grand campaign exclusively). It seems a bit more stable playing directly, but even then we periodically have problems so I can't specifically pin the blame on any one particular attribute of the game.

When you say the game freezes, where are you in the game and what are you seeing on the screen at the time?

If if is during transition between screens (i.e. Multi-player screen to Strategic right on start, or Battlegroup Screen to Battle, or Battle to Debrief) it could be a data transfer getting out of sync. If so, you may be able to get back to the Multiplayer screen by hitting ESC.

Just to be clear, this was not something you were seeing prior to the restart of the routing server, or it just seems more common now?

Thanks for the information. Does it ever happen going from the Battle Group screen into the battle? There are different bits of information being transferred at each of these transitions, so I am trying to narrow down what might be causing the problem.

When it happens, does the host make the transition (and sit waiting on the new screen) while the client is still showing a progress message? Do they both finish the transition? Or neither?

Hello, I've been having multiplayer issues as well with Panthers In The Fog. My friend purchased the game specifically to play with me and we just gave up on it and I talked him into playing Last Stand Arnhem instead, which we are having much more success with. Basically we were getting constant disconnects after the battle-group screen, at the beginning of the mission setup phase. Sometimes it'd just say the other guy disconnected, other times it'd give some bland crash report. We also experienced mid-battle crashes and disconnects, but I think you should focus on the other crashes/disconnects first.

Basically, one guy would either be stuck at some loading or receiving message, and the host would have a disconnect message. We both really agree, that PITF needs to have a direct connect option without first using the lobby.

Yes we both had the newest update, both using default options, yes we were doing a scenario/campaign (tried multiple ones). I've bought all the CC remakes and multiple copies of most of them and will continue to do so, I'm just disappointed that I talked him into purchasing the game to play with me and we can't even play together without hassle. I doubt he'll want to continue trying PiTF, but I have 2 PCs and can do my own testing between my PCs. Of course watch me not have the same problem.

Is there a debug mode? or some type of crash report file, log, anything? That will help you better debug this problem?

We had ports opened. It failed to notice several times as it didn't do direct connect, upon several retrys suddenly direct connection was working, but then stopped again after another disconnect. I don't think the direct or lobby connect made a difference from the disconnect/crashes.

last nite we played a few games of multiplayer in our GC. i am the host. i made my opponent hit next in all phases before me. we had NO freezes. did you guys tweeck the system??

to answer your questions.... 1] it doesnt seem to happen going from the Battle Group screen into the battle. but im not 100% sure. 2] neither of us finish the transition. we both sit on the original screen and wait. the host gets nothing as a message. the joiner gets waiting for opponent to finish i believe.

Pip im not sure if we are playing with opened ports for a direct connection. i usaully get that wierd message that we discussd earlier when i connect in the muli player screen.

I know this is a bit late in time to be mentioning such problems, but I just had a terrible experience with a glitch during multiplayer. I am not an avid online gamer so don't know much about what could have caused this but it goes pretty much like this:

a lot of lag. the game was very slow. then it sped up, then got slow. something unbearable in itself. but then in deployment mode for another battle my soldiers were appearing in the blacked-out zones of the enemy deployment zone. i could not move them. then the battle began and all the battle was was a big glitch for me. my soldiers were flying across the screen going every which way and half my force was missing. does anyone know anything about this? I would really like to enjoy myself playing this game and it seems odd that in this day and age the game would run so slowly and be riddled with so many glitches. The opponent i played against didn't seem to notice the glitches but they rendered the game unplayable. is this something on my end?

It sounds like you and your opponent were out of sync. I assume from the description of what you saw that your opponent was hosting the game? In multi-player the host machine is the one running the actual simulation while the client / joiner is just showing the information the host sends it. If the two games are out of sync (different files or different internal data) this can cause problems like what you're describing.

Are you both using the latest version of the game? Technically you should get an error message if you're not, but please double check that you both have the 1.01 update installed.

Are either of you using any modified game files? If so you both need to have the same files -- there are cases where you can get away with it if you're just using superficial mods (like a sound mod) but anything else is a risk.